Information Services in an Electronic Environment (International Yearbook of Library and Information Management 2001/2002)

Citation

Line, M.B. (2002), "Information Services in an Electronic Environment (International Yearbook of Library and Information Management 2001/2002)", The Electronic Library, Vol. 20 No. 3, pp. 244-245. https://doi.org/10.1108/el.2002.20.3.244.2

This book is the second in an annual series. It contains 14 chapters, in five broad sections. The authors come from seven countries, the USA contributing the most. Most papers are around 20 pages in length, but two (those by Cullen and Slade) are over twice that length.

The coverage is good on the whole. The most obvious lack is of a chapter on the impact, if any, on less developed countries; their potential ability to bypass the twentieth century by use of technology has been mentioned many times, and something on the prospects and barriers would have been very useful. Also, I found no mention of industrial information services. The book is remarkably up to date – some Web sites were visited as late as March 2001.

All the chapters are good, within their limits. One irritation is that the limits are not always stated in the titles of chapters. For example, Banwell’s contribution, titled “Information behaviour in the electronic age”, is concerned almost entirely with higher education in the UK, while Liu’s chapter on “The impact of the internet on public libraries” is restricted to the USA. Higgins’ piece on youth services, interesting though it is, has little about services (and less about libraries). The section headings are either useless or misleading, and should be ignored.

Most of the chapters are good routine reviews of what has been and is happening. These include Hartley on “Information retrieval in the electronic environment”; Jackson on “Information standards” (Z.39.50 etc.); Watkins on “Copyright implications for document delivery”; and Slade on “Research in distance learning”, which is evidently concentrated in the USA, Australia and the UK.

The three chapters on information literacy are perhaps the least satisfactory. Brandt’s is more of an essay than a review; he seems, from the small number of references, to have read little. Peterson’s contribution is rather thin, and Abbott and Peach base their chapter largely on the experience of one university in Australia.

I found three chapters exceptionally interesting or good, or both. That by Petersen and Thorhauge on Denmark’s Electronic Research Library is valuable in its presentation of one country’s experience in establishing a cooperative networked electronic access service; both the concept and the plan are interesting. Powell’s chapter on “Measurement and evaluation of electronic information services” is a very clear and well structured account of a new area. But the best chapter in the book is the first: Cullen’s survey of reference services over the years is masterly, covering all of the main issues.

Or does it? What are “information services”? They appear to include access to journal articles; why do not they also include access to books, which are not mentioned in this context in the volume? We are told numerous times that libraries are having to change in response to the electronic revolution; what is the whole library but an information service?

There are quite a few misprints, and on p.188 “equitable” is used to mean “equivalent”. The references are inexcusably sloppy. On pp. 38‐9 alone, we find one article reference with no pages given; three references to the same journal, one with a part number and two without; and both “American Library Association” and “American library association”. And why is the place of imprint never given? It is very useful to know where books were published, to allow for national bias etc. At all events, the index is excellent.

Four points to be noted for future volumes in the series:

1. 1.

   (1) there should be no division into sections;

2. 2.

   (2) the distinction between headings and subheadings within chapters needs to be made clearer;

3. 3.

   (3) titles of chapters should indicate their contents more accurately; and

4. 4.

   (4) references should be full and consistent.

Readers of this volume will obtain a good overview of what is happening in the field, albeit with some lacunae. It is recommended.